This is how apple kills off competitors. They "experiment", competitors close shop, then they come to their senses and undo the damage.
I am surprised Apple is not being brought up on monopoly charges.
I find that unlikely.
>Apple doesn’t give a damn about companies with business models that can’t afford a 70/30 split. Apple’s running a competitive business; competition is cold and hard. And who exactly can’t afford a 70/30 split? Middlemen. It’s not that Apple is opposed to middlemen — it’s that Apple wants to be the middleman. It’s difficult to expect them to be sympathetic to the plights of other middlemen.
..
>This is what galls some: Apple is doing this because they can, and no other company is in a position to do it. This is not a fear that in-app subscriptions will fail because Apple’s 30 percent slice is too high, but rather that in-app subscriptions will succeed despite Apple’s (in their minds) egregious profiteering. I.e. that charging what the market will bear is somehow unscrupulous. To the charge that Apple Inc. is a for-profit corporation run by staunch capitalists, I say, “Duh”.
>If it works, Apple’s 30-percent take of in-app subscriptions will prove as objectionable in the long run as the App Store itself: not very.
The above was from http://daringfireball.net/2011/03/dirty_percent
Looks like Apple didn't really succeed and backtracked once Amazon and Netflix started threatening to pull their apps which would make the iDevices much less valuable to many users. You can only pillage the ecosystem so much before it starts hurting you.
" 'It’s not that Apple is opposed to middlemen — it’s that Apple wants to be the middleman. It’s difficult to expect them to be sympathetic to the plights of other middlemen.'"
is clearly in agreement with what he replied to:
"this notion that Apple actively tried to kill iFlowReader is pure geek fantasy... Apple did not give a shit about them."
If you think they did, you're free to think that. I think it's profoundly unlikely that they even knew about them.
"This is how apple kills off competitors. They "experiment", competitors close shop, then they come to their senses and undo the damage."
Do you really think Apple went through all this to kill off some tiny company building software for their platform? No. They're relenting to make sure companies like Amazon, Netflix, and major newspaper and magazine publishers stay on iOS.
"I am surprised Apple is not being brought up on monopoly charges."
In what market does Apple enjoy a monopoly?
Note that only Section 2 of the Sherman Anti-Trust act even mentions monopolies. The rest of it deals with anti-competitive actions, of which monopoly may only be a potential outcome.
There has been at least one "coincidence" of this sort before: http://sivers.org/itunes
One rather dominant one didn't. Amazon are, fair to say, a fairly significant threat...
In the meantime, Apple started killing off the small guys while approving updates to Kindle and Netflix. Things were suppose to come to a head this month.